Chapter Text
JUST TO TRY IT
(AKA, "Mac and Dennis Fake-Date")
1
1:06 AM
On a Friday
Philadelphia, PA
It had been, as far as they came, a relatively ordinary Friday night at Paddy's. Business had been present, schemes had been outlined, mocked, and promptly forgotten, jokes had been made at Dee's expense, and then the night was declared too slow to continue with just before 1 am, and the gang disbanded. Charlie, as he often was, would be the last to leave despite being the first to arrive, had been the one to decide it was time to kick them all out to get some space to work, actually, and was still inside setting rat traps, or fly traps, or raccoon traps, for all Dennis knew. Frank had long since been gone, doubtless chasing after another one of his lady whores. Dee lead the charge out of the bar, stalking out of there like the new seamless, organic bamboo panties she'd been bragging about all night had managed to give her a wedgie after all.
Dee waved an insincere goodbye from her latest vehicle, a cherry-red sedan that had been going on a seven-week streak undestroyed, and then peeled out of there like a bat out of hell, leaving Mac and Dennis to make their way to Dennis' car, a car he'd had to park a little further away than usual due to some unofficial parking spot-stealing monster who'd left their economy-white sedan (made by that awful automobile company, of course) right where Dennis liked to park his superior vehicle.
“What the hell does Dee have to get home to so quickly?” Mac asked, locking the front door behind him, because none of them wanted another bum to wander in and then get attacked by a glued-up Charlie; the police often took too long to see their side of the story. “She didn't get a cat again, did she?”
“Probably just glad not to have to look at your face anymore. I mean, really, Mac, the beard is getting completely out of control. You look like if Liberace was a lumberjack, and also had no taste.” After that gratifying stint clean-shaven earlier this year, Mac was now apparently going through yet another macho man phase, and was growing something horrible on his face that he'd been refusing to attend to at all for nearly a month now, something that Dennis desperately wanted to hack off in the night. But Mac wasn't a deep enough sleeper for that.
Mac paused in his walk to turn around and scold him. “It's way more likely she was tired of all your nagging her about getting more Botox, dude. She's totally had enough, I think you're just trying to make yourself the pretty twin again.”
“'Again'? I've always been, and always will be, 'the pretty twin', you piece of shit.” Dennis knew Mac was just riling him up (the grin on his face was a dead giveaway, for one) but Dennis' prettiness was no laughing matter.
“Like let a lady's forehead have wrinkles, just because you can't stand any signs of aging—”
“Aging is universally recognized as disgusting—”
“I'm pretty sure in China they actually worship old people, and the more wrinkles the better, because more wrinkles means you've survived more longer, fought in more battles and stuff.” Mac stopped their progress on the sidewalk to mime swiping a sword through the air a few times, though he thankfully didn't add any sound effects.
Dennis began to craft his perfect retort, anticipating the satisfaction of declaring Mac both delusional and racist. It was at this moment that the sky decided to start its raining. Apparently it had some catching up to do, because Dennis found himself suddenly attacked by the most vicious downpour he'd been in since May 2019's post-hairdressing incident; it fell out of the sky like someone was dropping buckets, vertical, sudden, drenching, instantly flattening to Dennis' hair. Fortunately this time there was no expensive salon conditioning oil for hair regrowth to get washed away, but it was still goddamn infuriating.
“Of course this starts up just minutes after Sweet Dee makes her escape, this is just perfect.” Dennis bunched his jacket up around his neck, hoping that he could prevent at least a little drip from getting into his shirt, but the rate at which the rain was falling was likely going to make any efforts futile even though it was hardly a block to walk to where he'd parked, because goddamn was it ever coming down. “Fucking forecast is no use as usual, a 30% chance of rain my ass—”
Mac just stood there, rain dripping off his nose and his ridiculous beard. “Uh, well I actually learned something about that the other day, apparently the percent's not really like, a chance? It means that 30% of the weather reporting area—”
“The 'weather reporting area', that sounds very scientific, Mac—”
“Yeah dude, the weather reporting area, I don't know how else to call it— 30% of that area will be getting rain. And we ended up in the 30% region. But don't worry, Dennis, because I have something for this.”
Mac's face got serious, like he was telling Dennis that it was okay that armed gangs were coming to destroy the city because he had a bunker full of guns at the ready; the seriousness was blunted quite a bit by that look in the lids of his eyes and the corners of his mouth Mac got when he got to prove that he was prepared to take on the challenges of the world, but was actually a lot more interested in how he was coming off as a man than the actual situation he was dealing with.
“I got this little bad boy the other day.” Mac said, pulling a tiny, compact umbrella with a blue cover out of the pocket of his jeans. “It's got these badass eagles on it— but not in a way that says I think President Biden won the election by bussing in gay Mexicans to illegally vote, that is a super hard line to walk.” Mac looked proudly at him, goddamn gesturing with the umbrella instead of fucking opening it. “I came prepared today because I know how the weather works more better now. And because I am so sick of my nips getting cold when it rains, I think there might actually be something wrong with them, because it really hurts when they get cold— ” Finally Mac was taking the cover off, pressing the tiny button at the bottom of the umbrella.
The woosh of Mac's admittedly somewhat tasteful eagle-patterned umbrella being opened could just barely be heard over the sound of the heavy downpour. Then the assault ceased; Dennis' field of vision darkened as some of the street lights were cut out by this new dome of fabric and metal offering refuge from the relentless fall of savage water.
While still drippy, Dennis now felt like a new man. A warmer, more protected man, who could easily make it the five additional car lengths to the Range Rover. He looked over at Mac, who was bunching his bulk under the remainder of the umbrella, back still exposed to the elements but grinning like he'd solved cold fusion (that was still a thing they were trying to solve, right?).
“Thanks, Mac. You know, I can always count on you, when the rest of the world lets me down.”
Mac really wasn't so bad, Dennis mused, giving the still-smiling, too-bearded man a once-over, not in a particular mood to get moving just yet. It was a warm night, a nice night, aside from the sudden rain, why not linger a little.
Sure, Dennis reflected, Mac was annoying as shit, and brought way too many weird dudes back to their apartment and then had loud sex with them (some seriously weird dudes, Mac's ability to attract stable, non-insane sexual partners was still very much lacking), and he still didn't take the recycling down no matter how many times Dennis told him it was his job because their building's recycling room had mold and it bothered Dennis' sinuses (especially important after the fucking monkey incident!), but Mac did have his values. Really, Mac had many values, they just weren't nearly as numerous as Dennis deserved them to be. Values like now being able to open jars with complete ease, and Mac was also a veritable pack mule when Dennis needed someone to (help) carry the shopping from his annual wardrobe update, and he never took Dennis' freakouts personally, even when Dennis attacked him with barbs so pointed he was surprised he didn't prick himself throwing them.
In fact, when he wasn't too busy being a fucking idiot, Mac just generally did things for Dennis that no one else could, or wanted to, and it was one of the greatest comforts of Dennis' existence that he had Mac to fall back on should life force him to stumble. And their life together really wasn't so bad. Mac had turned into kind of a decent man, somehow, aside from a few remaining severe flaws, like his apparent comfort with beating up middle school children, and his stubborn insistence on still worshiping God, and his complete inability to address or even recognize his father issues. Mac wasn't even that bad to look at anymore, would maybe even be kind of handsome if he didn't insist on horrible Hawaiian shirts being part of his identity— and the beard obviously had to be dealt with, why the hell did he have to bring that thing back, it was atrocious, and dry, unlike his lips, those lips were not dry at all, was he using a new balm—?
“Yeah, man, totally.” Mac said, sounding a little dazed. And then he crowded into the umbrella space, and at first Dennis thought he was just escaping the rain more, but then—
“Hey, whoa!” That fucking shithead! Dennis took it all back: Mac was a menace, the worst part of Dennis' life and always had been, and he needed to be stopped, if not removed from public life altogether. Dennis glared at the man now standing too close across from him, glared with the fury of a thousand suns. “Mac, are you doing another goddamn kiss lean?” he asked, accusingly, even though the question was unnecessary, because that was exactly what was happening, it had happened enough fucking times for him to know this. “For God's sake, I give you one damn compliment and you lose control completely, this is ridiculous! Am I just supposed to not say nice things to you— believe me, I want to say nice things to you, I want to be able to say nice things to you, but you insist on this, goddamn it, Mac, you insist on this ridiculous obsession with me!”
Mac just stood there, still too close, with his mouth slightly open, apparently unable to come up with something to say to that, which was unacceptable, obviously it was unacceptable, how many fucking times had Mac tried this shit and failed, it was unreasonable, it was untenable, it was uncalled for, goddammit!
There had been a kiss lean not too long ago, at the start of summer. And one after the Johnny incident, of course there'd been one after the Johnny incident, Dennis should have seen that one coming, and like, five or six other serious ones in the last few years (or maybe somewhere closer to a dozen), all of which Dennis had of course hated and therefore managed to erase from his memory and couldn't recall the details of.
(Post-Dennis telling off a group of men at a new bar in South Philly who'd called Mac his 'gay support animal', still shaking from the freakout his actually gluten-containing gluten-free beer had caused but strong enough to sneer that they'd be lucky to have someone as great as Mac as their gay bitch and if they didn't leave them alone he'd slit their bowels open with a broken bottle; that night after Frank's chess victory, the light of realization finally present in Mac's eyes and accompanying an emboldened stride over to where Dennis was standing against the bar, the question 'So, if you were Johnny, does that mean you do —' cut off by Dennis' firm slap against Mac's hand that was reaching down to brace against the bar where Dennis was sitting to get a better angle for Mac to lean in from, simply told 'Mac, you need to back off, I'm trying to celebrate America, here' to be deterred from the subject; ten minutes after a surprised Mac had finished settling in next to him on the inflatable monstrosity they'd just set up in the living room, given hope again after Dennis had decided to frugally purchase just one bed for the two of them; on their way home in a cab from the mid-January 'Staff Party' Frank had decided to throw for them and an assortment of Frank's other associates in an attempt to stalk a former flame of his who'd come back to town and now worked at this hotel's lounge, Dennis patting Mac on the hand and telling him he'd done a good job, too tipsy said that he'd been a good boy, because Mac had actually fully shielded Dennis from the flying bottles and shattered glass that the room had turned into when Frank's scheme had gone off the rails—
Mac, jittery off energy drinks, after cajoling Dennis into scamming their way into a very reasonably-priced couples' massage in the mall while shopping for parts for their John Wick-themed Halloween 2022 costumes, apparently deciding to try to agree with the receptionist's assessment that they were 'too cute together' with a physical demonstration; caught by a tourist near City Hall who'd misinterpreted the way Mac was covered all the way up to the high hem of his very tight shorts in temporary Pride tattoos and grabbing Dennis' hand to beg him to lend him forty dollars, asked by this girl with violet highlights and an L.A. accent if she could take a photo of them together in front of the LOVE sign for her Insta story; dragged by Mac and a Dee who'd just made a gay friend she'd later terribly betray and make yet another enemy for life out of to a small bar on Locust Street, full of tequila and giggling at Mac's increasingly brutal jokes about the group of grizzled lesbians at the booth nearby and leaning in too close to hear as the bar got rowdier, and rowdier, so rowdy that he was knocked right into Mac and shared a look with him that he then immediately wished he could take back—
Subject to a cruel joke of Dee's, ambushed by a sprig of mistletoe that she'd maniacally placed above their heads while they'd been too busy watching football bloopers on Mac's phone; drunk, at an outdoor Labor Day 2021 party after begrudgingly agreeing to dance with Mac in hopes of spotting an easy mark for himself, laughing as Mac spun him around and dipped with unexpected skill at the end of the cover band's 'Benny and the Jets', which had caused an involuntary grin of elation too close to Mac's face as he was pulled back up; carried away in a game of splashing at the beach, stuck in Surf City, New Jersey alone with Mac after Charlie had bailed on their three day mini-vacation in favor of working on a scheme with Frank, stupid enough to think he could drag Mac down into the water and come back up with him without it causing a romantic moment in the late July sunset; in his own bed, grabbing Mac's hand to apologize in his roundabout way for being a plague-ridden pain-in-the-ass moron and a wheezing, still phlegmy asshole who was blasting through their checking account with purchases of DXM and Vic's Vaporub to provide himself several times the recommended dose—
New Years' Eve in the hot tub at the Airbnb Frank had rented for the gang, after the countdown to end 2020 and in front of everyone else, forcing Dennis to kiss Charlie instead out of spite and get another mouthful of cheese flavor; after the Thanksgiving dinner fiasco at Paddy's when Mac had saved him from slipping on a puddle of gravy left by Frank earlier in the night, interrupting what would have been a rare heartfelt thank you from Dennis for the catch; June at the park when Dennis had claimed Mac was his boyfriend to save himself from a previous, overenthusiastic date they'd run into on their daily walk to combat boredom and untoned calves; April 1 st , when Dennis had declared to the living room that he'd thought about it and now that society might be collapsing it was time to declare his secret love, which Mac hadn't found funny at all and had come very close to strangling him over—)
Mac's face finally got defensive. “Dennis, you were staring at me for like, a full minute—”
“I do that sometimes, it doesn't mean I've suddenly lost all sense and want you to kiss me—”
“—and your face was like, a nice face—”
“Oh, so I was 'asking for it'? That's not a thing anymore, Mac, we're only allowed to do 'yes means yes' now!” And hadn't that just disrupted years of carefully developed techniques, but Dennis was nothing if not resilient.
“I'm sorry, okay? You just looked really handsome, and happy with me, and you were totally looking at my lips, but I should know by now that that's like, not enough. Let's just forget about it, I just, thought maybe you wanted me to kiss you.” Mac rolled his eyes, like he thought Dennis was being the unreasonable one about the matter. “It's so not a big deal, dude, don't even worry about it. Won't happen again.”
“I wasn't looking at your—!” He may have made a cursory pass, but that was just because they'd looked soft, and Dennis really did need a new lip balm to address his own cracked mess. “And no, it is a big deal— for God's sake, Mac, this needs to stop! Like fuck it won't happen again, it's happened a million fucking times— it just happened two months ago!”
'Don't worry about it'? Like those words ever did anything but make Dennis start worrying about it, out of Mac's mouth.
“I already said it won't happen again, Dennis, you need to lay off me, I get it, it'll stop—”
Yeah, that sounded an awful lot like what Mac had said the last time this had happened. “No, I mean it, it really needs to stop.” Dennis paused to really look Mac in the eye, really dig in deep with the sharp, penetrating stare of the Golden God. “You managed to back off for a while, after my public reprimand, but it's been creeping back up, hasn't it, you creep— was it a mistake, for me to make the effort to rebuild our friendship?” Not that there had been any other options during the early 2020 portions of the pandemic, but Dennis supposed he could have packed up and lived in the forest for a couple of weeks before his inevitable failure and death at the hands of a black bear, or protein poisoning from eating only rabbits, which he still refused to believe was a real thing, no matter how much his doctor insisted he also needed to eat fat and carbs to survive.
“No way! No way, that was definitely not a mistake.” Mac said firmly, looking resolute. He backed away, now out of the umbrella almost completely, though he was still holding it in place to keep Dennis out of the rain. Then he started walking, forcing Dennis to follow if he wanted to stay protected. “Dennis, our relationship is super important to me. Super, super important. Like the most important thing to me— but not in a romantic way, because you don't want it to be romantic and I respect that, it's just got all the same power of love, and caring, and dedication that romantic partners have but without, you know, the banging and flowers and stuff. But it's also not important to me in the same way my relationship with Charlie is important, because that's important too, but me and Charlie don't—”
“Yes, you love me and you want to stay with me forever, that's a very established theme, it's a very prominent aspect of our whole thing, and I for some reason seem to in some way benefit from attending to your happiness if convenient— what exactly are we supposed to do now, huh? What, do I need to become repulsive to you, is that the only thing that'll do it? I'm not going to make myself ugly for you, Mac, that is not a goddamn option, I will not become ugly!”
“Of course it's not an option, Dennis, I still love you even when you're, uh, not at your best.” When they were both up in the middle of the night and Mac saw Dennis' bare, splotchy, wrinkly face with the deep eye bags and jowls that no one else was allowed to see, Mac meant. Which just went to show how delusional and nonsensical Mac's continuing obsession with him was, of course.
“So, what's your solution, Mac, because the problem is coming from you, you're 100% responsible for—”
“I don't know, dude!” Mac yelled, easily heard over the rain, as he held the umbrella over Dennis while Dennis opened the driver's side door and stepped into the Rover.
“Clearly pretending it's not there and never talking about it's not working—”
Mac slammed the door as he got into his side, scowling at Dennis as he did so. After that much time in the rain not really under the umbrella, Mac's shirt had soaked through, the front not quite skintight and heavy with rain and leaving nothing to the imagination, but wet enough to show Dennis that the cold of the shirt had indeed made his nipples hard. Of course it had. Mac complaining tonight about hating rain because it made his nipples too hard was not the first time, and it really did, and there were so many other rainy nipples Dennis would rather be seeing. Jackie Denardo's, for one. Frank had been enthusing about how great she'd look reporting in the heavy rain just the other day, and Dennis couldn't help but agree.
“We don’t talk about it because you don't want to talk about it, dude, I'd love to talk about it, I can talk about it all night!” Mac insisted, clicking in his seat belt with a lot more gusto than the situation called for.
“I can't think of anything I'd rather do less than hear you go on about the many ways you worship me— and bullshit you'd 'love to talk about it', when have you ever talked about it except to try to hop on my dick?”
When had they talked about it? Never, not actually, not properly, not with actual explanations about the misunderstandings and misinterpretations and frustrations and failures that had contributed to the festering mass of Mac's parasitic love and whatever the hell Dennis had going on about it, because why the fuck would Dennis want to participate in talking about that, and Mac didn't deserve it, and on top of all that, he'd never asked. But that was just par for the course, really. Mac asked him a million questions a week and he somehow never asked the ones that had answers he should want to know.
“You love that I worship you, asshole, I'm pretty much the only one who still does— I can stop, if you want—”
“You absolutely can't—”
“—but you totally don't want me to, so I won't—”
“Is there a middle ground, between acknowledging how exceptional I am and, and wanting to have my hypothetical butt babies? I just want a middle ground, Mac, surely we can find a middle ground. I mean, it's been what, two decades of this bullshit, get over me already, am I right?” Dennis laughed out the question awkwardly, cursing Mac for making them talk about it aloud without it being for Dennis' purposes.
Emotionally, it would hurt for a few days for Mac to truly get over him, to actually stop wanting him, as would any blow to his sexual ego no matter how necessary, but God would it ever be worth it. Mac could create a new appreciation for his best friend that had nothing to do with how beautiful and fuckable Dennis was. They could really get back to how things used to be, how they were supposed to be, how they'd been before they'd been ruined by Mac's incessant homophobia and subsequent severe course reversal, which had somehow been worse that the boner sermons because apparently, Mac's obvious feelings about him hadn't just been general gayness going to their only outlet, and that meant putting up with them for what was apparently for-fucking-ever.
Mac shrugged. “I dunno, Dennis, maybe I just can't. I mean there's nothing to really get over, 'cause I've never actually had you, so that's like— can you even get over something that's never happened? Not just some skank in a bar you couldn't get to come home with you, I mean someone you've been into for a long time.” Mac scoffed, giving Dennis a look that was entirely too devoid of kindness. “Like you even know what that's like, bro, you're too much of a man-skank to fall in love with someone, not even any big-breasted women. You've never been into anyone for longer than it takes to get them to drop their panties.”
“Sure I have.” Dennis watched the rain drop down the driver's side window, mind recalling that he in fact had fallen to the embarrassing affliction of long-term coveting, though it certainly wasn't anywhere near as extreme as Mac's nonsense. “I dunno, Mac, how have I been able to get over the agony of never making love to Jackie Denardo? I don't center my entire life around how much I'd like to bang her and her sweet cans. Because doing that would be pathetic. And it makes me sick when you're pathetic, Mac, it makes me want to throw up.”
Mac did a weird smile, like he couldn't believe Dennis was still on about Jackie Denardo, even though despite being in her late forties her cans were still top-class. “Uh, you haven't got over her at all, dude, you still spend a ton of time on her Insta— and you still stalk her when she's in a recognizable location, remember when you made me go with you to the symphony and you still totally biffed it? You are so lucky she never remembers who you are. I bet she brushes off so many creeps that she can't keep track. Not that you're a creep!” Mac's eyes went wide, and sincere. “I bet if she actually went out with you she'd get why you're so awesome.” Mac said, looking for a moment like he was self-conscious, for once, about his praise.
Dennis didn't care. “Well, whatever, there you go, there's someone I've been 'into' for years that I'd still very much like to bang. Except, fortunately for her and her clearly terrible taste in men, we don't interact every goddamn day. I don't waste my precious hours pining until I see her again. She doesn't have to put up with me finding the flimsiest of excuses to try to mash our faces together a half-dozen times a year! So if I want, I can keep being a quiet, unremarkable member of her fan club. You, on the other hand, are in a different, much more serious situation, and we need to deal with it.”
Yeah, okay, maybe he wasn't 'over' Jackie Denardo, because how could he be, it was still possible that circumstances might collide in a way that provides a situation where she could actually give him a real chance, a way to prove that he could be who she wanted, that she was missing something, that Dennis wasn't just some long-distance admirer who was obsessed with a fantasized, idealized version of her but a real choice, a man full of things that she'd love and enjoy, it was still very much possible that Jackie could give him a chance just like Charlie had once finally had with the Waitress, though look how that had turned out—
Dennis had a horrible thought. Oh, God it was horrible, but maybe it was the only way. If it was the only way, Dennis could do it. Dennis could do goddamn anything, but only when it came down to it.
“What?” Mac asked, sensing that Dennis was onto something big.
“Mac, when I say what I'm going to say, you're gonna need to not freak out on me, okay?”
Mac took the absolute wrong message from that, which Dennis supposed was on him. “Oh, no, Dennis, are you leaving me?” Mac asked, kicked-puppy look on full force. “You can't leave me, dude, I feel like we just got back into the Mac-and-Dennis swing like, two, three years ago, you can't leave me now— and who's gonna massage your pecs, your chest is gonna seize up and you'll look like one of those Russian grandmas, the babaganoushes—”
“No I'm not going to leave you, Jesus Christ you're dramatic.” He really was; Dennis didn't know which queen Mac had picked up dramatically clutching his chest and darting his eyes back and forth from, but it really didn't work for him. “No, I—” Dennis turned the key in the ignition, wanting to get off this damn street. “For God's sake, it's 'babushkas', babaganoush is some kind of shit with, eggplant!”
“Then what are you thinking, fill me in here, I wanna get straight to problem-solving mode. Let's figure this out, because I care about you, Dennis, I am listening.”
Now it was Dennis' turn to roll his eyes. “We'll talk about it when we get home.” he said, not trusting that Mac wouldn't cause an accident by yelling in reaction to what Dennis was going to suggest and blowing out his ear drum. “Just— I'm not leaving you, okay? You look like you think I'm telling you I'm going to prison, would you calm down?”
“You'd suck at prison, bro.” Mac grumbled, and Dennis decided he didn't deserve a response. Perhaps he'd meant literally. But Dennis would just bite off a few ears in his first week, get himself declared clinically insane which would be easy because he was a brilliant liar and actor and not for any other reason, and then he'd coast his sentence out in a psychiatric facility, or, infinitely more preferably, in solitary.